Swiss banker blows whistle on off-shore bank accounts

A former Swiss private banker is going to hand over data on hundreds of offshore bank account holders to the WikiLeaks website today.

Rudolf Elmer once headed the office of Julius Baer in the Cayman Islands until he was fired by the bank in 2002. He is going to go on trail in Switzerland for breaching bank secrecy.

Wikileaks is going to get two CDs which will contain names and account information of around 2000 individuals who have parked money offshore. Yesterday it was hoped that Julian Assange would be there to pick up the CD, but it is not clear if that would be a breach of probation.

Elmer said that WikiLeaks was his last hope as he couldn't get my message out. Blum, Elmer's lawyer, told Reuters: "The story is really about banks and banking, about bank secrecy and the damage it does to society when it's employed to hide tax evasion, money laundering and corruption."

Elmer told the Swiss newspaper Der Sonntag that the data involved multimillionaires, international companies and hedge funds from countries including the United States, Germany and Britain.